I went clothes-shopping this morning, bright and early to beat the rush. I got to the mall at 9:30 or so, and so began that delightful lesson that gets repeated more and more often as ever year passes.

I am clearly not a teenager anymore. I”m not even a fresh-faced 20 year old. And most of the time, I’m okay with that. But I always find it a little jarring to browse the clothing shops and discover that I’m supposed to wear the same stuff I wore when I was fourteen, should I want to “keep up with the trends”. You know – skinny jeans, off-the-shoulder tunics, big belts. The thing is, if this is the trend, I don’t. If I wanted to look like the girls from Double Trouble, I’d have kept all that stuff instead of giving it to Goodwill in 1990.

Still, I try it on. Why not? I drove all the way to the mall in the freezing cold. I might as well do myself a favor. So this morning I gathered up a bunch of gear, including a top that I swear someone in the cast of Fame wore in 1983, and headed into the change room.

And there I was, under the fluorescent light, in this crazy knit tunic that hid every inch of my hard work at the gym, when the clerk started up the stereo and I heard it. Let’s Hear It For the Boy, by Denise Williams. Yeah, from the Footloose soundtrack. I was standing there listening to music we played at house parties when I was thirteen, in almost exactly the same getup. IF only I’d remembered my jellies.

Needless to say, I didn’t make a purchase. I got out of there like a bat out of hell. But not as fast as I might have had I been a thirteen-year-old bat, and not a thirty-four-year-old one.